


Long Live--Part 4

by LaVieEnRose



Series: Long Live [4]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: CF, Cancer, Chronic Illness, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sickfic, cystic fibrosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27790804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: No one:Absolutely no one:Absolutely no one who has ever lived:Me: What if I rewrite the entire series but give Justin cystic fibrosisSeason 4.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Long Live [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015032
Comments: 11
Kudos: 102





	Long Live--Part 4

Justin wakes up at the loft one morning in December feeling like there are rocks in his chest. He curls up and coughs for a while and eventually shoves a half-awake Brian. “Do something.”

Brian stretches. “Oh, just do something?”

“Yeah.”

Brian sits up and pulls Justin along with him, balancing him against his chest. “Breathe....slow. Yeah, you sound bad.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure, yeah.” Brian works a hand around Justin's ribcage, trying to loosen up the muscles in his chest. “You're not going to class, are you?”

“No, not like this.”

“You want to come in?” Sometimes on bad days Justin goes to Kinnetik—Brian's thriving new agency, named by Justin himself—and just lounges around on the couch in Brian's office. Brian says it's because it's easier to get laid during his lunch breaks, but Justin knows it's because Brian wants to keep an eye on him, and he doesn't mind it.

But now he shakes his head. “I just want to sleep.”

“Do your vest first.”

“Fiiiiine.” 

Brian gets up to piss and brush his teeth and Justin sits on the edge of the bed and feels lonely. He stretches out his arms to Brian when he comes back, and Brian rolls his eyes and says, “Lord,” but hugs him. “You have a fever,” he says, laying his hand on the small of Justin's back. He likes to check Justin's temperature there.

“Yeah, I do not feel good.” He starts setting up the nebulizer.

Brian watches him. “Maybe you should come in...”

“I'm going to be loud,” Justin says. “And people are always coming into your office. I just want to sleep.” 

Brian studies him, then finally says, “Call me if it gets worse,” and leans down and kisses him. “Need to know if I'm taking you to the vet today.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Justin spends most of the morning either sleeping or choking up blood, so all in all, not a great day. He watches movies on his laptop and falls in and out of consciousness, and when he wakes up at around noon feeling like he's been hit by a bus and takes his temperature, he groans and calls Brian.

“Hello,” Justin says. “I'm calling because I'm honor-bound, not because you should come home.”

“You sound like a clogged drain,” Brian says.

“Vivid, thank you. How's work, darling?”

“Yeah, yeah. How's the fever?”

“A little under a hundred and three.”

Brian groans. “I'm coming home.”

“You really, really don't have to.”

“It sounds like you have pneumonia.” 

“In my defense, when does it not sound like I have pneumonia.”

“Hilarious. Let me hear you breathe.”

Justin takes a few breaths in and out.

“Yeah, I'm coming home.”

Justin coughs. “Yeah, okay.”

Brian comes back to the loft with a briefcase full of work-from-home shit. He fusses with Justin for a little, taking off his sweaty clothes and putting him into some of Brian's softer loungewear, checking his temperature and putting an ear to his back to hear him breathe, and then goes and sits at his desk to work while Justin coughs and rolls back and forth on the bed. “You want some tea?” Brian asks.

Justin chokes. “Uh-huh.”

“Get it yourself,” Brian says.

Justin glares across the loft.

“I'm just fucking with you, Jesus,” Brian says. “Give me a minute.”

Justin keeps glaring when Brian comes over with the tea, just to have something to do besides cough, and Brian smirks and kisses him between the eyes. 

“I really think we should make this little adventure a field trip,” Brian says.

Justin sulks and rolls over. “Tomorrow.”

“Who the fuck says _I'll go to the hospital tomorrow?_ ”

“People who know their bodies well,” Justin says. “They won't let me sleep there, just...please?”

Brian orders in Thai food and moves to the couch when he’s done working. “Come sit with me,” he says gently to Justin, who’s taken to pacing restlessly around the loft.

“I just have to...” Justin says, but he can’t remember what he has to do.

“You don’t have to do anything. Come here, you’re burning up.”

Justin sits down and shivers while Brian blows cool air on the back of his neck.

“‘S’okay,” Brian says softly.

“I know,” Justin pants. “Not my first time.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He does feel truly rotten, though, to the point where he almost rethinks the hospital thing. He calls his doctor, who tries to talk him into it but reluctantly agrees that tomorrow is okay. He wants to shower, but he knows he’ll end up fainting from standing that long and that’ll truly freak out Brian, so he just sweats and coughs and shivers on the couch and tries to choke down some of the food Brian nudges towards him.

“Haven’t seen you sick like this in a while,” Brian says.

Justin knows what he's really saying. “You’re doing fine.”

When it’s time for bed, Brian fucks him hard to loosen up the shit in his chest and then sits behind him on the bathroom floor while he coughs until he throws up. Brian gets him arranged in bed propped up on pillows to help him breathe, and Justin has extra antibiotics in his nebulizer and watches Brian set up the humidifier.

“You sure you’ll be okay tonight?” Brian asks, and Justin nods.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” Justin says, and Brian nods and cuddles up to him, his arm draped over Justin’s waist.

“Be okay,” Brian says sleepily, his hand rubbing gentle circles on Justin’s chest.

The night is rough. Justin spends a lot of it awake, trying to be quiet, but Brian wakes up anyway and comforts him softly in the dark. Justin just barely, barely feels guilty for keeping him up, which is proof of how far they’ve come if anything is. A year ago he would have been horrified at the thought of putting Brian through this. Now it wouldn’t feel right to do it without him.

His fever spikes past a hundred and four around three AM. Brian runs his hand over his mouth. “God, you’re really sick this time,” he says softly.

“I’m not dying tonight,” Justin says. “Don't worry about that.”

“I’m just worried you feel really bad,” Brian says, the kind of honesty Justin only gets from him in the middle of the night.

Justin tries to smile. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he says, and then chokes on another round of coughing.

He wakes up in the morning, finally, to a bed without Brian. He gets himself out of bed and teeters towards the living room, feeling unquestionably hypoxic. He slides onto one of the stools at the counter, where Brian puts a plate of toast and scrambled eggs in front of him. Justin eats slowly.

“One hour and we’re going,” Brian says, and Justin nods. Brian reaches across the counter and takes his pulse. “Not great.”

“I know, I know.”

Brian picks at his own plate while Justin eats, nagging him every so often to drink his juice or use more butter. Justin drops his chin into his hand and tries to stay awake.

“Your fingernails are blue,” Brian says.

Justin just nods.

“Feels bad?” Brian says.

“Yeah, it’s not good.”

“Your fever's really high.”

Justin nods again. “Yeah, I'm feeling it now.”

Brian pats Justin's shoulder on the way to the bedroom and says, “Okay,” softly. 

Justin yawns and falls a little asleep at the bar while Brian rustles around behind him. Packing a bag for the hospital, Justin assumes.

“Where’s your red pullover?” Brian calls in, sure enough.

“At Daphne’s. And don’t start.”

“Start what? Thinking about how much money you’d save if you gave up your dream of having a second home?”

“When I’m ready,” Justin says, for the millionth time. The truth is, he can’t imagine a way that moving into the loft wouldn’t always feel, like it did before, like he was a guest. Tiptoeing around and worried that he’s taking up too much space or being too loud, when he’s by necessity both those things. The dream he has these days he and Brian starting over together, somewhere new, but it’s useless. Brian will never give up the loft, and the loft will always be Brian’s, not theirs. So Justin is as small and quiet as he can be at Daphne’s instead, though it’s possible he spends more nights here than there, okay.

“Any particular CDs?” Brian asks.

“Whatever’s fine.”

“Probably going to be there for a while,” Brian says.

Justin coughs and shivers. “Yeah, I know.”

Brian finishes packing while Justin uses the bathroom and hacks up as much shit as he can. “How much blood?” Brian calls in.

“A lot.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna pass out I think.”

“Why the fuck are you standing up?” Brian comes into the bathroom and catches Justin by his elbows before his knees give up. “Gonna crack your damn head open on my tile, these are _imported—_ ”

“What if you shut up,” Justin says weakly.

**

It’s not a long ride to the hospital, but Brian still makes him a little nest in the passenger seat, pillows and a heating pad and a ton of blankets. Justin hugs the heating pad to his sore as fuck ribs and lets Brian play with his hair as he drifts off. Brian nudges him awake and into a wheelchair when they get to the hospital, and he stays with Justin through the check-in process. They kiss at the doorway to the CF ward.

“I’ll come by later,” Brian says, and Justin nods and tries not to cling.

A new nurse hooks IV antibiotics up to Justin’s port. “Who’s that hottie who came in with you?” she asks.

Justin tries to stop coughing long enough to answer. “That’s Brian,” he says. He smiles, despite everything. “He’s my partner.”

His first few days in the hospital are a misery, just an endless slog of PT and x-rays and high doses of antibiotics that make him sick to his stomach, but he does start to feel better after that. On Thursday, Brian comes in in the middle of the day, still in his work clothes, and Justin bounces in the bed. “Guess whose fever’s down?”

Brian smiles, very small, very brief. “That’s great.”

Justin feels it in the pit of his stomach. “You don't look excited.”

Brian swallows. “Sunshine...”

“Is something wrong with me? Did they tell you something?”

Brian pulls the chair up to the bed and sits down. “Nothing, you’re fine.”

“Something’s wrong. Is it Gus? Something at work?” 

Brian takes a deep breath.

Justin’s head is nothing but possibilities. “Oh God. What?”

Brian runs his hand over his mouth. “It’s Leo.”

No. No.

**

They think it was a heart attack, that his oxygen levels got so low that his heart couldn’t cope. But they can’t know for sure. He was alone in his apartment when it happened, and his mother found him the next day.

They think it was probably quick. That he didn't suffer too much, except for twenty-two years.

Brian comes in on Sunday in his blackest suit and coat. “How was it?” Justin says.

“Nice, I think.” Brian sits down and absentmindedly runs his hand up and down Justin’s arm. “There were a lot of people there. People made some speeches. A lot of flowers, you would have sneezed your brains out.”

Justin quirks up one side of his mouth.

“I met his parents.”

“Yeah, they’re nice.”

“Daphne came. She cried.”

“I should have been there,” Justin said. He’d tried to get a day pass from the hospital, but his doctor wouldn’t let him be out in the cold when his lung function was still this bad, especially with all the other CFers there.

“You would understand if he wasn’t at yours,” Brian says.

“He won’t be at mine,” Justin says. “He’s dead.”

Brian looks away.

Justin coughs into his fist. “I just want to get out of here.”

“I know. They said maybe Tuesday.”

“It’s stupid. I can do everything they’re doing at home.”

“You’re still on oxygen,” Brian says. “And IV antibiotics.”

“Both of which I can do at home.”

“Not without turning the loft into a hospital room.”

“I don’t live at the loft,” Justin says, exhausted.

“What can you do at home that you can’t do here?” Brian says.

“Sleep. I don’t want to be awake right now.”

**

But Justin can’t sleep, between the machines beeping and the nurses checking his vitals and the children crying on the ward. So he draws.

He draws a twenty-two-year-old boy, twisted and mangled, exploding into a black hole.

A heart stabbed with IV needles, bleeding out.

Then he works on Rage. He kills off a minor character and tries to feel some kind of catharsis instead of the profound, pounding sadness at the base of his throat.

Leo was here. He was right here, living with this disease, and now he’s dead.

What comes next for either of them?

**

The thing about Leo is that he did everything right. He was the one who got Justin back on track, when Justin was twelve and he was fourteen and Justin was being a noncompliant angry youth about the whole thing.

He never missed a treatment, and they all do. He never switched to oral antibiotics because it was easier, and they all do. The only thing he didn’t do was stay six feet away from other CFers all the time, because sometimes Suzie or Jaclyn or Justin just needed a damn hug, and that’s how he got pseudo, and that’s how his oxygen fell, and that’s how he died.

He was twenty-two. He was supposed to have years.

If Leo doesn’t even get the paltry number of years they’re offered, who does?

**

Brian sighs while they prepare the discharge papers. “I don’t...know what I’m doing,” he says. “It’s like learning about CF all over again. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Justin lays on his side, not deliberately facing away from Brian, but not rolling over either. “I’m not exactly an expert on this either.” He's had friends die, all CFers have, but it's been a while, and he was never this close to them.

“Do you want to, like...talk about what you’re feeling?” Brian sounds so awkward, like he’s reading lines for a play.

Justin snorts. “No.”

“Thank God,” Brian mumbles.

Because there's nothing interesting to say, really, about what he's feeling. It's exactly what you’d expect him to feel. This ugly mix of denial, grief, and the boiling, explosive anger that caused him to throw a water glass when his mother was here yesterday. None of it is strange or interesting. Of course he’s like this. He’s precisely like you’re supposed to be when a friend dies of the disease that’s slowly killing you.

Is that supposed to make feeling like this easier to deal with? It’s awful. It’s a brand new condition that he can’t get a break from.

And he’s still expected to deal with the other one. For some reason. Not like it worked for Leo.

At least he’s going home. Sort of. He’s going to stay at the loft while he gets better, because Daphne has finals coming up. Justin does too, but that’s been postponed, along with the rest of his life. He’ll be twenty-five by the time he graduates.

If he graduates. If he turns twenty-five.

Brian helps him from the bed to a wheelchair and back into his nest in the car. Just that amount of effort is enough to wipe him out, and he curls up around a pillow and coughs. He feels barely better than when he got to the hospital in the first place. This is such bullshit.

“Sucks you’re dealing with this on top of everything,” Brian says.

“I always deal with this on top of everything.”

Brian usually nips bitter sick kid comments at the bud, because they’re boring and self-deprecating and predictable, but he lets him get away with it now. He turns the music on low and stops for ice cream, which Justin picks at. “It’ll help your throat,” Brian says, like it isn’t all a ploy to get calories in him.

He falls asleep after they get back to the loft, dreams about Leo, and wakes up weepy and disoriented. He wanders the loft while Brian watches him, his thumbnail in his mouth.

“You want your vest?” Brian asks.

“No.”

“Maybe you should sit.”

“No.”

“You’re trembling a lot.”

Justin stops and throws his hands up. “I don’t want to do anything.”

“I know.”

“None of it matters,” Justin says. “It just stalls off my death a little longer. And maybe not even that. Leo was a fucking model patient. He was perfect. He was perfect and now he’s gone.”

Brian watches him. “I know.”

“And you’re going to be where I am now, going to another funeral, dreaming about me. Crying and walking around like a ghost. This isn’t a hypothetical. I’m going to die, and probably in the next few years.”

Brian doesn’t say anything.

“So what the _fuck_ am I still doing in your apartment,” Justin says.

**

Justin stops doing his treatments.

It’s not a dramatic decision he makes. He just doesn’t do one, and then doesn’t do another, and another. Brian notices, obviously, and does everything he can to coax him into using his nebulizer or taking his pills or just sitting with the vest for a little while, but Justin is grieving and he is an asshole and he won’t.

And he hates himself for hurting Brian, but it’s Brian’s fucking fault for keeping him.

“You have to fucking eat!” Brian explodes after two days of this, when Justin’s made himself so sick that he can’t do much more than lie in child’s pose in the bed and cough, and cough, and cough. “I’m going to call your fucking mother, I swear to God.”

“Just let me go back to Daphne’s,” Justin says.

“You are not dying while Daphne studies her fucking Bio textbook,” Brian says darkly, and Justin coughs too much to make a comeback.

**

When a week goes by and Justin still won't take his meds, Brian drags him to Debbie's house and presents Justin to Vic at his front door. “Fix him,” he says.

Vic takes one look at him and says, “Justin, you need to sit.”

“I’m fine.”

“He won’t listen to anything you tell him,” Brian says. “He’s being a petulant fucking child because he’s grieving and he’s miserably sick and I am out of ideas.”

Justin is too tired to do anything but glare at him.

Vic sighs. “Come on, Justin.”

He really does want to get off his feet before he faints like he did in the fucking kitchen yesterday, so he follows Vic inside and sits at the opposite end of the couch. Brian fucks off somewhere with Debbie to get out of the way, and Vic sits down and looks at him.

“It is awful,” Vic says. “To lose someone.”

“You know what’s worse?”

Vic does, of course. “Not being able to grieve properly because you’re so worried about yourself?”

Justin picks at the couch.

“We never know what tomorrow’s bringing,” Vic says. “It could be either of our last days. Or it could be the day they find a cure.”

“They’re not going to find a cure in my lifetime,” Justin says. “I gave that up a long time ago.”

“There are people with CF who live into their seventies,” Vic says.

“And there are people who die at twenty-two. Or seven. Or four. This isn’t the first time one of my friends has died.”

“Your friends died,” Vic says. “And that’s terrible.”

Justin wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

“But you didn’t,” Vic says, so gently.

**

Justin spends a few more days making himself desperately ill and screaming at Leo and at Brian and at God and at himself and finally finds himself so, so tired. He balls up under the comforter on Brian’s bed, wracked with chills. Brian leaves him alone for a long time, working on his laptop and tidying up around the loft, and eventually he comes up to the bed with a plate of chicken parmesan and a glass of water. Justin sits up and eats slowly. The comforter is littered with angry drawings in various stages of completion, and Brian picks them up and leafs through them absently.

“I don’t know what to say,” Brian says. “I don’t...you are killing yourself and I don’t know how to get through to you.”

“So leave.”

“Jesus Christ. I’m not going to leave.”

Justin has been waiting for this moment. “That’s what you did last time I was dying.”

Brian looks away, but there’s fire in his eyes.

“I can live with the fact that Leo died,” Justin says. “He wasn’t doing well, he was older than me, we were both expecting him to go first, we've had the conversations, he wants me to keep going. But I can’t deal with the fact that he died alone in his apartment. He was _alone._ “

“You’re not going to die alone,” Brian says.

“CFers don't die how Leo died, not most of the time. That's not normal, going quick like that .It’s long and it’s agonizing and it’s ugly and it’s _slow._ We end up alone because people can’t handle it. And last time you couldn’t handle it.”

“That was years ago.”

“I just don’t want to be alone,” Justin says, and just like that he’s crying, “I don’t want to die alone in an apartment by myself, I don’t want to just disappear, I don’t want my mother to find my body, I don’t want to die alone.”

Brian puts both of his hands on the back of Justin’s neck. “Look at me. Justin, look at me.”

But he’s crying too hard.

So Brian says it anyway. “You are not going to die alone,” he says.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Who, who is going to be there? Are you?” 

“This isn’t a platitude,” Brian says with a sigh. “This is a promise.”

Justin tries and fails to stop crying. “What?”

“Jesus, Justin, you can't lie awake listening to you wheeze your brains out and not think about this shit. Do you think I didn't make this decision a long time ago?”

“What...what are you saying right now?” Because it can't be what Justin wants to hear so, so badly. It can't be.

Brian licks his lips and swallows and then says, “I'm gonna be there.”

Holy shit. “Y-you’re going to be there?”

“Yeah. I'm going to be there when you die, okay? So that's it. It's done. All right?”

Justin folds into Brian’s arm and cries for Leo for a long long time, but he doesn’t cry for himself anymore. Something has come to a close.

“You have to come back now,” Brian says, and Justin thinks maybe he can. 

It's not what Brian meant, but a week later, Justin moves back into the loft.

**

Justin gets better, slowly. He's already missed enough of the start of the semester that it would be hell to jump back in, and Brian and his mother actually team up and practically give him a fucking PowerPoint presentation about how he should take this semester off, so fine, whatever. He's not up to going back to the diner yet, so mostly he just sleeps, paints, and works on Rage. He spends a lot of days on the couch at Kinnetik and decides he doesn't mind it all that much. He's missed seeing Brian work, loves seeing him confident and in charge, and it is nice to have someone there to give him a hand if he needs it. Brian stops watching him like a hawk to make sure he takes his meds (he does, diligently) and starts trusting him to handle himself again. Justin breathes.

He misses Leo every day. He has lunch with his mother at one point and gives her the sketches he's done of him over the years, and she cries and hugs him so, so tight.

“Do you ever get over it?” he asks Vic.

“It's...you get further into it,” Vic says. “Like going further into the ocean. You're not hit with every wave anymore, but you still feel them.”

Justin, of course, immediately paints that, and Brian says it's his best yet.

“It's still not my big, speak-for-the-trees piece,” Justin says. 

“You know, no one read Ben's book,” Brian says, and Justin laughs.

**

It may not be his Big Important Work, but Rage is taking off. Michael's having the time of his life being the talk of the local comic world, and Justin has to admit it doesn't quite suck the first time a tiny little geek recognizes him and asks him with reverence if he's THE Justin Taylor. The only bad part is that Brian's with him when it happens and he spends the entire rest of the day pretending to hound Justin for his autograph.

Justin's back to work at the diner and mid-shift when Michael runs in with the letter. “They want to make a Rage movie!” he yells.

Justin reads the letter. “Well, they want to talk about the very early, very faint possibility of making a Rage movie.”

Brian says, “Well well well, look at you, Kubrick.”

Justin rolls his eyes and refills his coffee. 

“Aw, why so blasé?”

“Good things don't happen to me,” Justin says. “It's not going to work out.”

“You live with the hottest guy in Pittsburgh,” Brian points out.

“True, and he does stun me daily with his humility.”

“Just get excited about something for once in your pathetic life, Jesus.”

Justin throws him a big, cheesy smile.

“There you go.”

They go out to Babylon that night to celebrate, the first time Justin's been there since he got sick. Dancing is still a lot to ask of him, so after a song or two they end up on one of the seats under the stairs, drinking and tangling their legs up together and rating the guys who walk by. Justin gets pleasantly drunk and watches the way Brian's eyes sparkle in the colored lights and can't believe, for a minute, that this man is his. This incredible, flawless man. 

Okay, so he has flaws. But they just make him more beautiful, like antique furniture or impressionist art.

Justin feels warm and stretchy when they walk back to the car, and Brian puts an arm around his shoulders and says, his voice only a little slurred, “This Hollywood thing is pretty fuckin' cool.” 

“Aw, you're proud of me,” Justin says, and Brian says nothing, but a minute later he picks Justin up, just for a second, like he couldn't help it.

**

About a week later, Brian comes back to the loft one evening when Justin's sacked out on the couch. Brian shakes his foot to wake him up and goes to hang up his suit. “Doing okay?” Brian says.

“Cough cough cough all day. I'm over it.”

“I'll let them know.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm going on a business trip next week, okay?”

Justin sits up. “Hmm?”

“D.C., for a week. Should be properly boring. You can have Daph come stay if you want.”

Justin yawns. “No, I'll be okay. Will be fun to cough as loud as I want.”

“I thought you were over coughing.”

“I'm allowed to change my mind.” 

Brian comes over to the couch and leans over and kisses him. “You look nice today,” he says.

“So do you,” Justin says, and he trails his hand down Brian's chest, but Brian stops him when he gets to his waistband. “Something wrong?”

“You're tired,” Brian says. “Don't hurt yourself.”

“I don't like when you're nice to me.”

Brian kisses him again. “Sure you do.”

Justin pouts and watches as Brian goes into the kitchen. “Did you eat?” Brian says.

“Not yet.”

“There's fucking nothing in the fridge, I'll order something.” Brian taps his fingers on the counter and looks far away for a moment.

Justin waves his arms up in the air. “Why are you being weird?”

Brian clears his throat and takes his phone out. “I'm just thinking about how you'll be on your own.”

“I'm a big boy, Brian, I'll be fine. It's just a week.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

**

Justin barely hears from Brian while he's gone save a few texts checking in to make sure he's still alive. It's kind of strange, being on his own for this long, but Justin finds he doesn't really mind it. He doesn't have to worry about leaving his things out or cleaning up after himself as soon as he's done using his vest or cooking dinner. He misses Brian, of course, and it stings a little that he never calls, but the loft feels almost like...his, for the first time. He wears Brian's clothes and lies in the middle of the bed at night and paints in the living room. 

Brian comes home from his business trip looking worn out as all hell. He appears at the diner while Justin's swamped near the end of his shift, and Justin's heart skips a little when he sees him. He gives Brian's shoulder a nudge when he walks by, his arms full of plates of hash browns and scrambled eggs. “Hey.”

Brian turns around a little in his seat, following Justin with his eyes. “Hey.” Justin smiles at him.

“How was DC?” Justin says. He drops off the plates and goes to wipe down the counter, coughing a little into his elbow.

“Riveting.” Brian watches him. “How were you?”

“Good. Had one bad night, called Michael and he babbled at me about the who's who at Brett Keller's studio for a while.”

“Hey,” Michael says.

“Hey nothing, it helped!” Justin checks the clock on the wall. “I've got to get going.”

“Doctor's appointment?” Brian asks.

“Mmmhmm.” 

“I'll drive you.”

“You have work, I can take the bus.”

“Took the day off,” Brian says. “C'mon.”

They walk to the car, the late April sun bouncing off Justin's shoulders. “Did you see the president?” Justin says.

“Thankfully no.”

“Did you bring me back anything?”

“Yeah, a little snow globe with the Washington Monument.”

Justin laughs. “Fuck off.”

“It's the most phallic building there is.”

They get into the car and Brian drives to the doctor's office on muscle memory, and Justin relaxes back against the window and turns the seat warmer on, even though it's balmy outside. The heat feels good around his sore ribs. 

“Think you're a little less skeletal than you were when I left,” Brian says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it's good.” Brian glances at him, then back at the road. “I know I should have called.”

“It's okay.”

“It's just—”

“You get to take breaks sometimes,” Justin says. “That's allowed. You're healthy, you get to lock yourself into this.”

Brian clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“At least you weren't off fucking anything in sight behind my back like Ethan did on his break.”

“Yeah, I do that in front of your face instead.”

“Exactly.”

“When's your meeting with Hollywood?”

“Two o'clock,” Justin says. He and Michael are meeting Brett Keller at this trendy restaurant Brian really likes. “I'm going to make my doctor beat the shit out of me so I'll sound nice and unclogged.” 

Brian pulls up at his doctor's office and Justin takes off his seat belt. “By the way...I did miss you,” Brian says, softly.

Justin's startled, flattered. Concerned. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, if you're okay.”

“I'm okay.”

Brian kisses him. “That's all there is, then. Call me when you're done, I'll pick you up.”

Justin walks into the doctor's office with a bad feeling in his stomach. 

**

Meeting with Brett is amazing. Michael's all starry-eyed, and by the time Brett's done telling them the celebrities he's envisioning playing Brian, _his Brian,_ in a real, actual movie, so is Justin. Michael drives him back to the loft, and they scheme the whole way about what they'll wear to the premiere and how they'll sign their autographs and who will play _them_ when someone inevitably makes a movie about making the movie. 

“I think it would end with my death,” Justin says to Brian. “I'm like, surrounded by Rage memorabilia, and you're holding my hand, and I'm like, _you can't save me this time, Rage._ ”

“Bleak,” Brian says, lying on the couch. 

“Poetic.”

“Same thing.” Brian yawns and rubs at his eyes, and he looks young, adorable. Justin crawls on top of him. 

“D.C. really wore you out,” Justin says. 

“Mmmhmm.” Brian puts his arms around Justin and hugs him into his neck, rocking them back and forth a little bit. Justin, obviously, reaches for Brian's crotch, tries to make it slutty, but Brian stops him gently. “Not now.”

Justin lifts his head up. “Okay, I'm pretty sure I've never heard you say 'not now,' ever. What's going on, are you sick?”

Brian snorts out a laugh. “If I were sick I'd have you isolated in a plastic bubble.”

“Okay, so...”

Brian shrugs and scoots up on the couch. “Just not feeling like it tonight.” 

Justin tilts his head to the side. “Rest. I'll make dinner.”

Brian closes his eyes. “You're sweet.” 

“Much to your dismay, I know,” he says, and Brian laughs.

Justin gets up and starts pulling stuff out to make pasta, something quick and easy so Brian won't have to wait too long and hopefully, hopefully, he can carbo-load and give Justin the fucking he's been waiting for for the past week. He's coughing a lot, a byproduct of forcing himself to breathe like a functional human being in front of Brett, and Brian stirs on the couch.

“Y'need your inhaler?”

“I'm okay.”

“Sound bad today.”

“No, you're just fussing over me a lot for some reason. Someone's out of practice ignoring me after a week away.”

“Never,” Brian mumbles into his pillow, and Justin smiles.

It's not until after Brian's asleep, snoring softly on the couch cushions, that the phone rings. Justin would answer it, but his hands are full tossing a salad at the moment, so he lets the machine pick up, hoping it's something from Michael or Brett.

It's not. It's a doctor in Baltimore, and Brian is sleeping right in front of him, and everything comes crashing down.

**

Justin doesn't say anything through dinner, but when it's over, Brian presses the button on the machine to hear the message, and when he snaps his head up to Justin he knows he's been caught. Justin can see it in his eyes. 

“I...” Brian says.

“Why the _fuck_ didn't you tell me?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I mean...Christ, are you okay? You had surgery? What do you need?”

“Stop.”

“No, I'm not going to stop. You have to tell me what's going on.” His voice shakes. “How the fuck would you feel if I kept something like this from you?”

“You keep shit from me all the time!” Brian says. “I don't know when you're having a bad day unless I fucking figure it out for myself, you get up in the middle of the night and I hear you puking your guts out when you haven't even woken me up to help you, I get up some mornings and you're on fucking oxygen out of nowhere, you get these new prescriptions and don't—”

“That's different!” Justin says. “That's not...that's not big and out of the ordinary, that shit happens all the time.”

“EXACTLY!” Brian yells, and he sweeps his arm over the counter and knocks all this shit to the ground. “That is exactly my _fucking point!_ ”

Justin narrows his eyes.

“You have a fucking terminal illness,” Brian says. “You feel like hell every day. I'm not going to come to you complaining about my ninety-nine percent survival rate cancer, I'm not.”

“This is not a fucking contest about who can martyr themselves out the best!” Justin says. “We can both be sick at the same time. You know how I know? Because we're _both fucking sick at the same time._ ”

“I'm not sick.”

“You have cancer, Brian!”

“I'm the healthy one!” he says. “I take care of you. That's my fucking job.”

Justin swallows and tries to make his voice even. “What happens next? Chemo?”

Brian looks away. “Radiation. They said I'll keep my hair.”

“Is your immune system going to be affected, do I need to—” 

“I told them the situation, they said it's okay.”

Situation. What situation? My house boy who I'm not planning on telling I have cancer has cystic fibrosis?

“When do you start?” 

“Tomorrow.”

Justin shakes his head. “I am so fucking mad at you.”

Brian has the decency to look down.

“Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?” Justin says. 

“It's just...” Brian raises his hands, lets them fall. “It's not right,” he says. “This isn't the way it's supposed to be.”

Justin would judge him a lot more if he didn't know exactly what he meant.

He's never taken care of anyone before. The whole idea of it scares him. He knows how much work the people who love him put into him, and he's wondered his whole life what he would do if the situations were reversed, if he would be a good enough person to do everything they do. 

And now that's happening, except not really, because the situation isn't reversed. He's still sick. He has to be the caretaker and he has to be sick. 

And so does Brian.

“We'll figure it out together,” Justin says.

**

Brian, it turns out, has the harder time adjusting. He lets Justin come to radiation and drive him home afterwards, but he shuts the door when he's vomiting and rebuffs Justin when he tries to give him cool cloths and something bland to eat. Brian feels well enough later in the day to get some work done, and Justin goes to his diner shift and tries not to worry the entire time he's there. 

“Hey,” he says when he gets home, sliding the loft door closed behind him. “How are you?”

Brian just grunts, clicking furiously at something on his computer.

“I brought home some pancakes,” Justin says. 

“Not hungry.”

“That sounds familiar,” Justin says, shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

Brian doesn't react for a minute, then he sighs and rolls his desk chair away form the computer, facing Justin. 

“This is just not fucking right,” Brian says. “This isn't...”

“You're used to me being down a well and you pull me out. I know.”

Brian looks away. “It's not like that.”

“It is like that. And look, it's fine. You don't get to keep all your pride when you're sick. You live with that. You'll figure it out soon enough.”

Brian pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Does it make it better or worse that it doesn't feel right to me either?” Justin says.

“Better. At least I'm not crazy.”

“Just, y'know. Radiated.”

Brian's mouth quirks up in a smile. “Yeah.”

“Come eat, okay?”

“Okay.”

**

It gets a little better. Brian feels consistently shitty for the six weeks of radiation, but he never gets horribly sick or has any of the scary side effects. Each week he gets more and more used to having Justin around, and Justin gets more used to not hovering and doing his stress-crying in the diner bathroom instead of at home. Because it's never _right,_ having Brian sick. It's never okay. It's just what's happening anyway. 

Balance is temporarily restored to the universe when Justin's throat closes up in the middle of the diner shift, probably because he wasn't careful enough delivering a customer's plate of shrimp linguine. He keeps an epipen in his locker, so he's okay, but Debbie insists on calling Brian anyway. He comes in steaming mad and hugs Justin while he yells at him for not getting someone else to handle the dishes that kill him, and Justin enjoys the bawling out almost as much as the physical contact. It's familiar. It's right. This is how Brian shows he cares.

One of the nights Brian is sickest is a bad one for Justin, too, and they spend it camped out on the bathroom floor together, making up secret handshakes and lazily jerking each other off and telling jokes until one of them laughs so hard he pukes. It's been a while since Justin's been sick with someone else—something he doesn't want to think about too hard, lest he start crying in the middle of a night that feels very breakable—but it's always something he liked. And he never really thought he'd get the chance to do it with Brian.

“How do you do this all the time?” Brian asks, around three AM. “This, what I'm fucking doing, this is a good day for you and I want to blow my brains out.”

“I don't have a choice,” Justin says.

Brian stretches out on the floor. “Well, you could always blow your brains out.”

“People with CF don't have high suicide rates, actually,” Justin says. “We're mostly happy how we are.”

“But you'd take a cure if there was one.”

“Because I don't want to die,” Justin says. “Not because I want to be some healthy person.”

“But life could be so much easier.”

“Life would be easier if you were straight,” Justin says. “Does that mean you wish you were straight?”

Brian snorts. “No.”

“So there you go.”

“I just don't get how you're not fucking angry,” Brian says.

And Justin laughs, big and real. “I am so fucking angry all of the time. How do you not see that?”

“You're bright and shiny.”

“Someone has to be, when you're all dark and stormy.”

Brian groans and clutches his stomach. “Do not talk about rum right now.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“I just don't understand not wishing you were healthy,” Brian says. “I'd kill someone if it meant I didn't feel like this for another three weeks. I'd kill you.”

“Thank you.”

“It's a compliment, you were a bigger stretch than 'someone.'”

“This is how I've always been,” Justin says, taking a slow breath through his nose so he doesn't start coughing. “There's no me without CF. There's not a healthy Justin out there in the realm of possibility. It's this or it's nothing.”

“And you wouldn't take nothing.”

“I would have,” Justin says. “Before I met you.”

They eventually drag themselves into bed, but Justin wakes himself up in an hour coughing and coughing and coughing, and Brian winds his arms around his waist.

**

“It's dumb to be this sick when you're not even going to die,” Brian says at one point, crashed on the floor of the loft, and Justin has to agree.

“Are you worried about that?” Justin says.

Brian gives him a look. “Ninety-nine percent survival rate. I have a better chance of dying from your shitty driving on the way to radiation.”

“I think about that sometimes,” Justin says. “All the other ways I could die. It always freaks me out. I think I like knowing how I'm going to die.”

“I know how I'm going to die,” Brian says. “High out of my mind with at least three men on top of me.”

“That sounds good. Arrange that for me too.”

“Bit short notice, isn't it?”

“Oh my God, I will kill you right now.”

“At least get on top of me first.”

**

Justin ends up in the hospital ten days before Brian's scheduled to finish his radiation. Brian can't visit him there because even if Justin doesn't have any germs colonizing his lungs that could knock him out, other people on the ward do. Justin's not horribly sick so it's not a huge deal for him to be alone, but he worries endlessly about Brian and drives him crazy calling him every two hours on the day he has radiation. “You are literally _in the hospital,_ ” Brian says. “You have to be the sick one today.” It's _has to_ when it comes from Brian, _gets to_ when it's from Justin. Thank God their normal set-up is what it is. 

“There's a little kid on the ward who just got diagnosed,” Justin says. “Little two year old toddling around. Everyone's obsessed with him.”

“Yeah, I remember when Gus was that little.”

“He's got the CF cough already so he fits right in. He's a natural.”

“God, that's fucking bleak.”

“I guess. But they say kids born with it now will live into their forties. That's a lot better than when I was born.”

“More time to find a cure, too.”

“You and a cure. Get a room. What do you care about a cure? In a few years I'll be gone and CF will be but a distant memory to you.”

“I don't know,” he says. “The kid sounds cute.” 

**

Brian gets busy with some project after that, and Justin doesn't pay much attention because after he gets out of the hospital his sole purpose in life is counting down days until radiation is over. They celebrate with Chinese food on the floor and glasses of white wine and a spectacular fuck that nearly throws out Brian's back, and then Brian goes over to his desk and Justin says, “Okay, what is so important that it must interrupt our No More Radiation party?”

“I'm making you a birthday present,” Brian says.

“That's sweet, but it's July.”

“It's not for you anyway, really. As I'm sure you'll immediately point out, because you're all obsessed with how you're dying.”

“I know, it's really tedious for you.”

“Come over here already,” Brian says, and Justin comes to the computer and sees a mock-up of a flier for a charity bike ride. To raise money to find a cure for cystic fibrosis.

“Brian,” Justin says.

“I know, I know, we can't save you,” Brian says. “But maybe we can save some babies.”

Justin stands on his toes and kisses him. “I love it. I love you.”

“Sure sure sure, what do you think of the colors?”

“Oh, they're awful, let me fix it.”

**

Neither Brian or Justin can get permission from their doctors to actually participate in the ride, which is kind of better than if one of them could and the other one couldn't. They make plans to help Debbie pass out lunches—no fucking shrimp, Brian says—and organize the riders and manage pledges, all sorts of stuff they can do as they drive alongside the riders from Toronto back to Pittsburgh. 

And then Hollywood calls.

Justin's at the shop with Michael working on the new Rage when it happens, incidentally. Brett calls Michael's cell phone and says the movie is almost, almost greenlit, and one of them needs to come to LA to seal the deal. “I think Justin,” Brett says over speakerphone. “No offense, Michael, Hollywood just loves young and cute.”

Michael says, “Well, he's definitely that,” which is nice, in an objectifying sort of way. He and Justin exchange looks. _Can you do it?_ Michael mouths.

Justin nods.

“Okay,” Michael says. “That's fine, Justin would love to.”

“When?” Justin says.

“Tomorrow,” Brett says. “Stuff moves quickly here.”

God, that's a lot to take care of last minute. Justin mentally runs down the list of things he needs to do: get copies of his medical records, arrange for a wheelchair and oxygen at the airport, reschedule a doctor's appointment. It all feels a lot less daunting than it did when he was younger. Now it makes him feel grown-up, to have a to-do list like this. Capable.

But. “The Charity Ride,” he whispers to Michael.

“You weren't riding anyway.”

“But Brian and I were going to—” 

Brett says, “Boys? There a problem?”

Justin grapples for a moment, then says, “No, no problem. I'll be there.”

**

He was worried Brian would be mad, or at least disappointed, but after he makes sure Justin's thought of all the health stuff he's totally on board. “You would be an idiot to pass this up,” Brian says, stuffing Justin's vest into a duffel bag. “I don't fuck idiots.”

“You do, though.”

“Well, I don't make a damn habit out of it.”

Justin goes down his checklist. “Shirts, sandals, skincare—” 

“That's my boy.”

“—neb, inhaler, you got the vest...”

“Pills,” Brian says, holding up the organizer. 

“All my paperwork and shit, that should be in my carry-on...”

“With the pills and your inhaler.”

“Yeah.” He looks up at Brian. “I've never traveled alone before.”

For a second he thinks Brian is going to offer to come along. Justin can't decide if he wants that.

But Brian just says, “You'll be fine. Walk in the park.”

“Mmm.” Justin looks down at his list. “Sunglasses. I don't have any I like.”

Brian sighs. “Hang on.”

**

Justin arrives in LA wearing Brian's sunglasses and his favorite blue tank top, feeling like a hundred million dollars. He arrives at Brett Keller's mansion, which probably cost a hundred million dollars, in the middle of a party, and he drops his bags and shakes hands and smiles and schmoozes and everyone and does the things he'd always imagined doing in art galleries one day. This is good enough. A part of him says _yes._ A part of him says _finally._ He wishes Brian could see him like this, but he also knows that if Brian were here he'd revel in that safety, would retreat back a little bit, let Brian handle everything. He'd be young and cute and not a lot else. Not to Brian, obviously, never to Brian, but to everyone else who sees him as Brian's sex toy or his charity case. 

He hasn't been outside of the context of BrianandJustin in a long time. He can't remember the last time he interacted with anyone who didn't know Brian. 

He's enough here, on his own. And that shouldn't feel like a betrayal to Brian—Brian would never be offended that Justin wants to do something himself—but it does, a little, and he feels uncomfortably guilty as he makes everyone at this party, one by one, fall in love with him. 

He's cool and collected with the movie stars, smiles and calmly compliments their work, shakes hands like he has any fucking business being here. Maybe he's channeling Brian a little bit, but maybe he isn't; maybe this is him. It's who Brian grew him into, no doubt, but maybe he gets to claim it now. 

Brett's the first person to mention Brian to him, obviously, since no one else here knows who Brian is. Which remains very hard to believe. “So Rage is Brian,” Brett says. “And Michael is Zephyr.”

“They're not...direct parallels, but yeah.”

“So that would make you J.T.”

Justin raises his glass in affirmation. “The ingenue.”

“So did he rescue you from drowning?”

“Picked me up off the street,” Justin says. 

Brett clinks his glass with Justin's. “Amen to that.”

He's not planning to disclose, figures he can keep it to himself for a few days, but then he just...does. Everyone's standing around with a glass table and some coke, it's all very glamorous, and Brett offers some to Justin and he says, “No, no, cystic fibrosis.” 

Brett says, “What?”

Justin throws his arms into the air. Okay, he's maybe a little drunk. “Cystic fibrosis!”

“No shit,” Brett says. “My cousin...yeah, same thing with her.”

“Oh yeah?” Justin says. “How's she doing?”

Brett freezes, stutters.

“It's okay.” Justin pats his shoulder. “It's okay. Let's get another round.”

**

He sleeps with a truly countless number of people that night, and Brett laughs about it the next morning. “I thought you were all paired up,” he says.

“Brian and I aren't like that.”

“Well, you're young,” Brett says. “At some point you'll probably want to settle down...”

Justin just watches him.

“Shit,” Brett says. “I'm sorry, I didn't...”

“It's okay,” Justin says. “This is what being with Brian means. I'll take him how I can get him.” Justin shrugs. “I need him.” 

They head to meetings, and they go swimmingly. Justin is dazzling. 

This movie is really going to happen. Something good is actually going to happen to him. 

“You should come out here in a month when we start production,” Brett says on the drive home.

“Yeah, I'd love to see how it's going.”

Brett laughs. “No, I want you to work for me. I want you heading up the art direction.”

“I...what?”

“You did the drawing,” Brett says. “Who better to visualize it than you?” He kisses Justin's cheek. “LA fits you like a glove.”

And the thing is, it does.

“Yes,” Justin says. “Of course I will. Of course.”

**

He feels a little guilty that evening for not at least _telling_ Brian before he said yes, if not consulting him, so he tries to call but doesn't get an answer. Justin frets, catastrophizes, tries to remember that his doctor gave him the all-clear and everything is probably fine. Brian's up somewhere between Toronto and Pittsburgh passing out ham sandwiches. He'll be thrilled for Justin when he hears about the job. It'll be fine. 

He flies home the next day, takes a cab from the airport to the loft, and then realizes he's right in time to meet the riders as they come in. He feels like he owes it to the cause to be CF Boy at the finish line, and all the better that he's feeling rundown as hell from the flight and his breathing's pretty swampy. Show everyone what they're raising all that money for. 

Debbie hugs him when he shows up at the finish line. “How was LA?”

“It was great. Amazing. Where's Brian?”

Debbie rolls her eyes. “He went on the ride.”

It all makes sense now. Justin laughs. “Of course he did.”

Ben comes in with Hunter, but there's no sign of Michael. Or Brian. Hunter pulls Justin aside and says, “Brian's okay. But he got hurt.”

“Fuck.”

“It's his shoulder, I think it's dislocated or something. There was a medic there who took care of it, gave him a sling and everything.”

“So where is he?”

“He's finishing the ride. Michael's with him.”

“He's finishing the fucking...God, I hate this man.” 

It's hours and hours and hundred of riders before Brian and Michael finally appear around the corner. Brian's wobbling on his bike, looks close to giving up, and Debbie has to hold Justin back from running down the path to go get him. “You're not breathing well, honey,” she says, and she's right; he was due for meds hours ago, and he's feeling it.

But still. “He needs me,” Justin says.

Debbie says, “Look,” and Justin does, and he sees Brian, faraway and small, looking back at him.

So Justin says the thing he knows will motivate Brian to get over here. The non-dirty option, that is. 

“I can't breathe, get your ass over here!”

And Brian gets back on his bike and comes towards them, tortuously slow. Justin catches him the second he comes over the finish line and says, “You know I'm going to fucking kill you.”

“If you live long enough. You sound like shit.”

“Yeah, I've been standing outside for five hours because someone wouldn't let the fucking medic bring him back.”

Brian pants and steps off his bike. “We are going to go home.”

“Correct.”

“And I am going to take care of you,” Brian says, firmly.

“You have a dislocated shoulder. I'm the one who—” 

“Justin?”

“Yeah.”

“Shut the fuck up and let me have this.”

Justin laughs and fits his arm around Brian's waist. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Calliesky, Julie, and Hannah for supporting this fic!!!
> 
> To get updates and see how you can join the squad, you can follow me on twitter at twitter.com/LaVieEnRoseFic :)


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